


The Overspill

by Saziikins



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Post-The Final Problem, Season/Series 04 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 01:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9357653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saziikins/pseuds/Saziikins
Summary: As the day's events finally catch up with him, Sherlock is haunted by old memories. But there are other memories he has repressed too - adult memories he had forgotten. As he unlocks them, they give him a new outlook on the relationships in his life. Post-The Final Problem.





	

**Author's Note:**

> THIS HAS SPOILERS FOR THE FINAL PROBLEM AND ALL OF SERIES FOUR. 
> 
> Read at your own risk if you haven't seen the episodes.
> 
> This is my first attempt (of many, I suspect!) to take on the events of TFP. It's Sherlock dealing with a deluge of memories and finding there are other ones open to him now. It is not as focused as I'd have liked, with hindsight, but I suspect these ideas will develop over the next few days as I think a bit more clearly about the series and the new canon available to us.
> 
> For what it's worth, I really enjoyed this episode. And I'm excited about writing some new stuff from it.

He took several steps back, eyes glued to Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock knew Lestrade saw more than anyone else did. The concern was written in his raised shoulders and clenched fists, long after he had turned away and continued delivering instructions to the officers under his command. Though his voice was steady as he gave the orders, there was a roughened edge to it, a gruffness kept at bay, only barely. 

Sherlock winced as he gazed back up at Musgrave, tormented by vivid images of two young boys - he and Victor - running free around the grounds, and hiding behind the gravestones. 

“Oi, Sherlock!” He blinked, and squinted into the darkness to where Lestrade hung out of a car window. “Where are you staying tonight?”

Sherlock shuffled towards him. “Baker Street, I imagine.”

“I wouldn’t.” Lestrade’s face softened. “I got Mrs H to a hotel, like you asked. I suppose your room’s okay, but after everything… don’t go there tonight. Can you go to John’s?”

Sherlock glanced round to where John was on the phone, talking to his sister. “Harry’s got his bed, John’s on the sofa tonight.”

“Alright.” Lestrade reached into his pocket and held his keys out. “Go to mine. The sheets aren’t that clean, but there’s spares in the airing cupboard. Help yourself to whatever you can find in the kitchen and try to get some sleep. Your brother should be back at his place first, I’m going via there, then going home. I want to find you there.”

“I can go to Baker Street.”

“Sherlock.” Lestrade sighed and stretched his arm out further, holding the keys closer to Sherlock. “Please. I’m begging you, do not go home alone tonight.”

Yes, Sherlock thought, as he pulled his coat tighter, inhaling the cool air. Lestrade saw more than anyone else did. Sherlock took the keys, admitting to himself that being alone was not going to be an option, not if he wanted to make it through the night without drugs. “Fine.”  

“Give the guys another half hour and a car should be free to take you and John back. Need me to say anything to Mycroft?”

“No, no.”

“Alright. Do me a favour and check the cat has enough food, yeah? And try to get some sleep. I’m sorry I’ll have to wake you up when I get in, but I don’t have another key.” 

“It’s fine.”

Lestrade grimaced and turned back to his steering wheel. “I’ll try not to be long,” he said. Sherlock stepped away as Lestrade rolled the window back up. 

Never had so many people stood on Musgrave’s lawns. Not since… not since those hours and days and weeks spent searching for Victor. When the baffled police came and went and came again. The blue lights flickered, casting distorted shadows over the gravestones. 

John returned to Sherlock’s side, hanging up the phone. Sherlock remembered standing beside Victor once, the two of them laughing at something, jovial, free. 

“What did Greg want?” John asked.

“He offered me his bed.”

John spluttered. “What?”

“Not like…” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m sleeping at his.”

“Oh right. Yeah, I’m sorry I can’t offer you a spare bed. What about Baker Street?”

“A bit of a mess, apparently… Better to see it in the light of day.” 

“Where’s Mrs Hudson?”

“Lestrade found her a hotel.” An option open to Sherlock too, he thought, frowning. But Lestrade was right, better for him not to be alone. Not when his mind was racing, when he was making connections between past events he had never considered as relevant before. 

He dug his heel into the wet earth and remembered digging out worms and fishing with Mycroft and with… with _Her_. He rubbed his forehead. John took another phone call, this time from Mrs Hudson, but Sherlock did not hear a word while he was trapped in a crypt in his head, surrounded by whispers from long ago.

While in the back of the police car, he played with his phone, now out of battery, dropping and catching it, dropping and catching it, remembering games in the gardens, tossing a ball back and forth, calling out riddles and rhymes. 

He managed to call out goodbye to John as they dropped him outside his flat. He would hold it together, he promised himself. He would keep at least half his brain focused on the present, until he arrived at Lestrade’s flat. 

He had always liked Lestrade’s flat. It was the same one he had always lived in, ever since Sherlock met him, even when his wife moved in and then left again. It had been bought before the property boom, when developers were just beginning to search out untapped potential in the city, and bought with years of savings and inheritance. It was set in a warehouse, with exposed brick walls and wooden floors. There were traces of graffiti on the walls, and burn marks and flecks of paint from its industrial history. 

There was no pretentiousness in it, not in the mismatched furnishings, well-loved and worn. It was an open-plan living space, with thick, dark-wood tables and framed music posters on the walls. It was small enough to feel cosy in, but large enough not to feel like everything was closing in. 

Sherlock pushed the heavy, metal door closed and toed off his shoes. Lestrade had left a cheap Ikea lamp switched on beside his brown leather sofa, which Sherlock slumped down on. He jolted as a black and white cat sprung off the windowsill, and it made its way over with bright eyes fixed on him. It leapt onto the sofa, let him stroke between its ears, then began to kneed his lap, making itself a place to nest. 

It purred when it sat, and for a short while, Sherlock did not feel quite so lost. He focused, instead, on memories of earlier times, to that fat ginger cat Lestrade used to keep, the one he called Rex on most days, Bloody Animal when it brought in a mouse, or KitKat when he thought no-one could hear him. 

Sherlock had snuck in so many times when he knew Lestrade was on a late shift, and had wrapped himself up in fleece blankets, Rex curled up in his lap. That was back in those days, when he had run from Mycroft, when he avoided CCTV cameras, and could only get warmth when he was at the Yard or Lestrade’s flat. His own place, hidden away, was cold and damp and musty. It was where Mycroft could never find him, a dark, dingy place, where he suffered from continuous colds and flu and bronchitis. 

He remembered running, dressed as a pirate. He ached with the memories. His hands shook and he stroked this new cat, trying to remember Rex instead. He had been such a grumpy creature, and he always hissed at Lestrade’s girlfriends and wife. 

Sherlock had no idea when Rex had died. 

He leaned back and closed his eyes and hoped to sleep. 

The crash of the door closing brought him to. He jumped, and winced as the cat dug its claws into his thighs. Lestrade kicked his shoes off, and chuckled, running a hand through his hair. “What is it with you and my cats, ‘ey? How come they always like you better than me?”

Sherlock shrugged a shoulder, and shushed the cat, stroking it beneath its chin. 

“It’s Smudge,” Lestrade said, before Sherlock had a chance to ask. “I found him under a bridge over the road. Tiny thing. I put up posters, but no one claimed him, so he became mine.”

“When?”

“When you were gone. Rex died a few months before.” 

Lestrade adjusted the radiator and wandered to his kitchen, turning on the kettle. Sherlock checked his watch. He must have fallen asleep, for it was gone three am. 

“I told you to go to bed,” Lestrade reminded him as he carried over two steaming mugs of tea and sunk onto the sofa beside him, collapsing as though pulled down by an enormous weight. “Christ,” he groaned, rolling his shoulders. He stretched his socked feet out in front of him and curled and flexed his toes. “God. Bloody hell. You alright?”

Sherlock stared at him then dropped his eyes to Smudge. He stroked his fur, watched him settle back down and close his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Lestrade murmured, closing his own eyes as he tilted his head back. “You don’t need to say anything, I know it’s been a shitter of a day.”

Sherlock hummed. “How’s Mycroft?”

“Me and his assistant, what’s her name…?”

“Anthea.”

“Yeah. We got him into a hotel in the end, he was in no fit state for his own place. He’s got all the luxuries he can need there, 24-hour protection, food on demand, huge bath. He needs comforts, warm things. Soft pillows and a place where someone else can wait on him for a change. I’ll check on him again tomorrow, but Anthea’s got a room there too, she’ll keep an eye out.”

“Thank you for that.”

Lestrade huffed a laugh. “That’s twice you've thanked me today. Are we going for a new record?” Sherlock bit his lip, dragging his shoulders in close to his body. Lestrade pulled a face, not opening his eyes. “Ah, sorry. It’s not the right time to rib you, too late at night and too early in the morning for anything but tea and biscuits.”

“You didn’t even provide biscuits,” Sherlock managed, his voice quiet.

“I don’t have any. There might be some hobnobs around somewhere, perhaps. It’s been such a collection of rotten weeks, I’ve been grabbing takeaways and ready-meals. You’re lucky I had milk.” Lestrade sat up and pressed a mug into Sherlock’s hand. “Drink this. It’s got a few spoonfuls of sugar in it, I think you need a boost.”

Sherlock did as he was told, grateful for the sweetness. “Go to bed, Sherlock,” Lestrade murmured. “Take your tea, and take Smudge. He makes a great bed companion, if you don’t mind him waking you up by sitting on your head and purring in your ear in the morning.” The corner of Sherlock’s mouth turned up. “There, now, that was almost a smile.”

The small faltered, then, and fell. “I can’t sleep. Not yet.”

Lestrade eyed him. “What can I do for you?”

“There’s nothing.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Lestrade sighed and looked around his flat, as though an answer may lie in the exposed brick, or in one of his posters. 

“Did you know?” Sherlock asked. “About… _her_?”

Lestrade grimaced. “I knew about Sherrinford, and I knew a woman was there. I didn’t know who she was to you, or to Mycroft, only that she was one of your brother’s most important and top secret jobs. He told me some things. Some… trigger words I had to listen out for. I can’t even remember them, Sherlock, he told me them 10 years ago when he first introduced us.”

“My handler,” Sherlock muttered, bitter.

“Hey, I was always on your side, you know that. Did I ever tell Mycroft where you were?”

Sherlock sighed and drank his tea. He knew that was true. Lestrade may have been a hired guard, but he wasn’t dutiful, not like Mycroft wanted him to be. Mycroft had stuck with him, because Lestrade kept Sherlock out of more trouble than the previous people assigned to him had done. With time, Sherlock had even come to respect him. 

They drank their tea, with only Smudge’s purrs and the occasional rumble of the traffic outside for sound. 

Sherlock downed the last of his tea, and the undissolved sugar, and winced, remembering the tree house in the woods. He had sat with Victor on those worn out cushions and made treasure maps, drinking from mugs full of sugary lemonade and eating sickly coconut ice sweets. He let out an agitated yell. “I can’t…” He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

Lestrade’s hand came to rest on his shoulder and he squeezed. “I know it’s hard right now. Mycroft told me, you’re going to be remembering things you didn’t even know you’d forgotten. Small things are triggering it, yeah?”

“Everything is…” Sherlock clenched his hands into fists. “Constant, constant noise.”

“I know,” Lestrade whispered, rubbing Sherlock’s shoulder. 

Lestrade always knew, Sherlock thought, anger swelling up at the certainty of it. Lestrade could always look right through him. He remembered Lestrade walking away from him earlier that night, all-seeing and watchful, as though he already knew how Sherlock was reliving childhood memories. He knew things about Sherlock in a way no-one else ever could, he stripped the skin from his bones and exposed him. 

Sherlock had always hated being alone with him, and craved it, in equal measure. It was unnerving, too frightening for words, to be in the presence of someone who knew him inside and out. Who could read his moods, even if he could never know what was going on in his head. Sherlock knew, and could admit it at last, that sentiment really did rule him. And if Lestrade was an expert in anything, it was in sentimental gestures, and in providing tenderness in a world which did not offer that for free. 

If Mycroft needed luxury and comfort tonight, Sherlock realised he needed physical contact from another human being to ground him, and Lestrade was the best man he knew. 

Lestrade had never seemed to want anything from Sherlock, though. He never asked for a thing, except for Sherlock to embrace his own uniqueness, and grow and become… become a good man. A good man, the sort Lestrade now thought he was, even after all those deaths, so many deaths, and how he had hurt Molly.

And he did love her. Sherlock loved her, but not in the way he wished he did. And he loved John, and Mrs Hudson and Mycroft… even Mycroft, who would have given his own life to save John Watson. Sherlock _had_ saved John Watson. He had saved him for Mary, who he also loved and missed so much it ached. 

He lifted his hand to grip Lestrade’s, tightening his fingers around his. Greg Lestrade. He remembered lying on this very sofa, shouting at him, cursing at him, begging him for another hit while Lestrade fed him bananas and tea instead of heroin, and called him a silly wanker, and fucking prat, and pressed a damp flannel to his head. 

He used to lie on this sofa, with Lestrade on cushions on the floor while he read Sherlock’s science books to him, because Sherlock’s head pounded and the world spun, but the data and the science helped. Lestrade would tuck him into his bed, and then sleep on this sofa. And Sherlock would creep out, and sometimes he would find a dealer just to spite him, and the cycle would continue. 

Lestrade never stopped pushing, not once, in 10 years. He always had one hand firm on Sherlock’s back, nudging him towards goodness. And if only Sherlock had looked back at the man behind him. If only he had turned his head and realised that if he sought goodness, then he simply had to replicate what came so easily to Lestrade. To Greg. Greg. 

Greg, who became Lestrade, because Greg had been his first real friend after Victor. Only Sherlock hadn’t remembered Victor, but somehow he knew friendship equalled pain. He knew friendship with Greg was only going to hurt, so he had kept him at arm’s length. 

Sherlock trembled and touched his cheeks, his fingertips coming away damp. An arm, warm and firm, wrapped around his shoulders. 

Sherlock met Greg’s eyes, felt something uncurl inside him. It sat there, heavy, but a comfort. He welcomed the renewed memories of Greg, his smile when Sherlock deduced his cases, his eyes sparkling whenever Sherlock stalked away. He saw the two of them, pouring over cases and drinking tea and arguing over everything and anything, and then Greg laughing and shrugging, and letting Sherlock win. 

And Sherlock loved. And knew he was loved, by Molly and Mycroft, and John and Mrs Hudson and by Greg, who had seen it all and known it all. Greg, who just looked at him, right at him, and saw everything.

“Thank you,” Sherlock whispered, burrowing close to him, closing his eyes and breathing him in. 

Greg squeezed his shoulder. “No thanks needed, Sherlock.” 

They sat there for a while, Sherlock’s cheek pressed to his chest. Smudge got up, stretched and hopped off the sofa, scuttling towards the bedroom. He slunk through the bedroom door. “Smudge has the right idea,” Greg murmured. “We’ll never sleep at this rate. Are you ready to try?”

Sherlock lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. The memories had stopped racing through his mind. He was settled, at last. At least for now. He held Greg’s brown eyes, observed the tightness in his jaw, the frown on his brow. 

He dropped a hand to Greg’s, curled his fingers around his, and tugged. Uncertainty flickered in Greg’s eyes, but he let Sherlock lead him to the bedroom. Silent, they undressed, Greg pulling on a white T-shirt, and finding a spare one for Sherlock. They slid beneath the covers, the lamp in the living room providing a light through the crack in the door. 

They were walking on untrodden ground now. On pathways, undiscovered and unexplored. Sherlock angled his face for a kiss, and Greg met him there, as though he knew, as though he had always known. It lasted but a few seconds, but for the moment, it was enough. They curled around each other, legs wound together, arms holding on, as if to a life-raft. 

Sherlock remembered, as he closed his eyes, a soft, faint memory of Greg’s lips against his forehead. He realised, as he began to give himself over to sleep, that if he had only opened his heart, Greg would always have been here, waiting for him. 

He heard a thump as Smudge jumped onto the bed, and promptly tried to wriggle in between them. Sherlock let out a surprised laugh. Greg joined him in it, and pressed his lips against Sherlock’s, as they shook with helpless laughter and clung to each other, trying to kiss but too lost in swirls of humour to be successful. 

Sherlock had never laughed himself to sleep before. But he woke up with a smile, with Smudge on his head, and Greg laughing himself silly about it. 

The memories, which had seemed so dark the night before, felt lighter, clearer. He would live with them, all of them. The painful ones, the repressed ones, the ones which made him ache. Because his memories brought him truth. And his memories had brought him home. 


End file.
